The Rosie in the Ring
by misslizzie1204
Summary: A case about family brings up some sore topics for both Brennan and Booth, with the potential to completely alter their relationship with one another, as well as with their friends and partners. Will eventually be B/B. Eventually.


**Hi guys, new story from me. I was reading some viewer predictions on how Hannah may have been disposed of, which got me thinking on how I'd have done it. This is the end result. Well, it will be, when it's finished ;)**

**This chapter is a fair bit of setting up for the future, but it shouldn't be too tedious if I've done my job as an author. Enjoy :)**

It was a lazy afternoon in the Jeffersonian, with no current case to work on and no calls from the FBI in over a week. Due to an ongoing categorisation upgrade, even the bones from limbo were inaccessible, leaving the lab uncommonly quiet. The only sound could be heard coming from the office of one Temperance Brennan, who was having a long-desired conversation with her best friend, Angela Montenegro.

Leaning back against her couch, Brennan clasped her mug of coffee in both hands, giving a sigh of contentment. Angela lounged contently on the couch opposite, her hands instead resting upon the pronounced bump protruding from beneath her flowing maternity shirt.  
'How is it, really?' Brennan let her eyes drop to her lap with mild embarrassment, but only for a moment.  
'Of course, I've read a substantial amount of research on pregnancy, but I've never actually had an opportunity to ask anyone first-hand about the experience.' She quickly continued, covering the moment of vulnerability with her usual factual self. Angela merely smiled, recognising Brennan's internal battle between her insatiable curiosity and the streak of pride preventing her from asking a question so outright.  
'You know what? It's the little things that stick out the most.' Angela lifted her cup of tea off the table before them, swirling the contents while she talked.  
'Like, I'm tired all the time, I used to be able to stay up and watch a movie with Jack on the couch, but now I just end up asleep. I love pears, all of a sudden. I used to hate them, but now they are the only thing I can stomach with this morning sickness. And,' she let her eyes dart to the door for a moment, 'I haven't shaved my legs in over a month.' She gave a conspiratorial smile, and chuckled at her friend's sceptically raised eyebrows.  
'Why do you think I'm wearing pants all the time? I just feel so… lazy. Blissfully lazy. All the time.' She drooped her head against the back of the couch, an almost narcotised expression of contentment softening her features.

Brennan smiled back, and her friend gave a small giggle. Letting her eyes drop back to the mug in her hands, Brennan felt something tickling at the edge of her heart. A feeling, she couldn't tell what, that was slowly forming as she watched her friend on the couch opposite. But before she could analyse it any further, the phone in her pocket gave a shrill buzz. She extracted it with her fingers, and upon seeing Booth's name lighting up the screen, quickly answered the call.  
'Yes, Booth?'  
'We've got a case. Can I swing by and pick you up in five?' His voice held a slightly stressed edge, and she could hear the hustle of the busy FBI office in the background.  
'I'll be waiting.' Brennan replied, and Booth abruptly hung up. Brennan pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it for a moment with mild disbelief.  
'What's up?'  
'Booth just said we have a case.'  
'So?'  
'He hung up on me.'  
'He was probably just a little busy, sweetie. This is your first case since last week.'  
'But he never just _hangs up _on me. He always says goodbye…' Brennan trailed off, looking at the now-dark screen of her phone, before quickly replacing it in her pocket.  
'He said he would be here to pick me up quite soon. I'm sorry to have to leave, Angela.' She paused in the doorway, 'I feel like we never have time to talk anymore.' Angela gave a small smile as she slowly levered herself off the couch.  
'How about when you finish this case off we have a girls' night? I'm afraid we'll have to crash at yours, since I can't exactly go clubbing like this.' She swept a hand across her belly, giving an apologetic smile.  
'That sounds lovely. I'll talk to you when I get back, you'll probably need to do a facial reconstruction for us.'  
'Sure thing,' Angela started, but Brennan was out the door and swiftly walking towards the exit before she could say a proper goodbye.

Within minutes Brennan was sitting in Booth's SUV, and they were making their way towards the crime scene. Silence reigned. Brennan looked out the window, with blank eyes watching the traffic. Booth drove, but occasionally let his eyes dart across to his partner's face in concern. Just as the tension reached its pinnacle, both began to speak.  
'What's the matter…?'  
'Why didn't you…?'  
They both cut off as suddenly as they began.  
'You go, Bones.' Booth said, his eyes meeting hers for a moment before focusing back on the road.  
'Why didn't you say goodbye? On the phone?'

'Sure I did, Bones. I always say goodbye.'  
'Not today.' Booth sat in silence for a moment, before running a quick hand through his hair.  
'It's just,' he sighed, 'I can tell this case is going to be a hard one already.'  
'How so?'  
'It's not confirmed yet, you'll be able to tell us if it's right, but the coroner who arrived at the scene this morning thought they found infant bones alongside the corpse.'  
'Oh.'  
'All I could think of was Ange, and I know we should stay objective, but even in the best of circumstances child cases are difficult…'  
'I know. But as I have not yet been able to assess the bones, let's not humour conjecture.' A short silence fell once again, Booth driving a few minutes more before pulling up before rustic manor accosted by barriers of yellow forensic tape. Booth opened his door, lingering a moment in his seat.  
'I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye properly.' He said, his voice stiff with awkwardness, before swiftly leaving the car to find the officer in charge of the crime scene. Brennan sighed and allowed her head to gently thud against the headrest. The awkwardness between them was tiring and utterly frustrating. Just one year ago, that conversation would have been easily conducted, without any tension. He could have spilled his feelings about the case, his intuition and emotional connection, without a second thought. He could have apologised without it sounding painful.

The irony of the situation was agonising. She had turned him down in fear of things changing, for fear of losing the Booth she already had in the gamble to win a better one. By backing out of the bet, however, she managed to lose what she had not been willing to stake- their relationship, their closeness, unlike any she had felt before. She had come to terms with her loss, of course, but it was little moments like these that reminded her of the hefty chunk of her heart that had been cleaved out by her mistake.

Brennan then realised she was dwelling on the unchangeable, which was barely acceptable when she was alone and not required for anything let alone working at a crime scene. She quickly gathered her things and followed the path that Booth had taken, through the heavy front doors and into a small foyer, elaborately decorated with ancient and majestic furnishings. Seeing Booth talking to a local police officer beside a polished coffee table holding an ornately carved and painted vase, she quickly moved to his side.  
'…got the call at around 7am, found it in the main gallery, which is just through this way.' The man began to walk as he informed the pair of the circumstances under which he found the body. They walked through a set of dark polished doors, into a gallery with creamy walls and pale wooden floorboards. Arranged along the walls was a vast collection of ancient paintings, in the renaissance style. But, rather than the artworks drawing attracting attention, the untouched crime scene in the centre of the room drew every eye.

The centrepiece of the display had been a large statue of a slender woman holding a ring above her head, her eyes filled with reverence. The marble woman was set upon a wooden plinth, with wide panelling decorated with carvings. One panel had collapsed, with it allowing a mangled and melted corpse to spill across the floor, along with pools of fetid semi-decomposed flesh and fluids. Juxtaposed against the bleached wooden floor, the blood and gore seemed potently obvious. Brennan immediately stepped forward, snapping on gloves before moving towards the body, careful not to disturb any potential evidence. Booth hung back, next to the local police man, whose face was slightly awestruck as he watched Brennan rattle off the details of the victim.

'Facial bones suggest female,' Brennan began, leaning in to inspect the ribcage shimmering with fluid, 'I will need to check more closely at the lab, but I believe the epiphysis on the sternum is incomplete, indicating she is under the age of 30. Facial structure also suggests Caucasian, which is fitting with the proportions of the skeleton.'  
'And the other bones?' Brennan turned her gaze to the thick pool of degraded tissue directly beside the victim, carefully extracting a white protrusion from amid the grime. Even to Booth's untrained eyes, he could recognise the tiny pelvis. Cursing under his breath Booth turned back to the cop, whose awe was now slightly sickened.  
'Uh… Christ… Uh, the curator is waiting to speak to you, when you're ready, Agent Booth. Do you need…?' His eyes sank back down to the floor, and he paled further upon seeing Brennan extricate a tiny skull, held together by tenacious strands of cartilage, and lay it carefully down beside the pelvis in a transport box.  
'No, thank you. Could you go check on the tape outside, try and shoo of any nosy neighbours?' A micro-expression of relief relaxed the man's hardened face before he could pull it into check, and with a nod at both Booth and Brennan he was quickly escaping out the door.  
'I'm going to chat with the curator, will you be okay by yourself?'  
'Of course, Booth. When you're done I'll need you to call in to get all this taken back to the Jeffersonian, including the statue.'

With a nod Booth walked away, heading back to the foyer to find the curator. A twinge of regret flicked against his heart as he walked away. It was odd, and felt very unnatural, for him to be so formal with his partner. But ever since that night where he had risked everything, only to be turned down, things had developed into something uncomfortable. He couldn't say anything, and neither could she, so they were instead left dancing precariously around one another. The team depended upon their façade- last time they had left Cam had almost been fired. None of them wanted to recognise the altered dynamic either, feigning obliviousness that Booth knew none of them could possibly possess. The tension was almost tangible. So Booth had instead fallen back on Hannah, the cause of so much of his current angst with his co-workers, to feel the love and trust that he was so accustomed to receiving every day back before he had taken his gamble, and lost the pot.

With a rueful sigh he walked back out into the foyer, his shoes click-clacking across the beautifully maintained floors. Glancing around the room, there was only one person who was not dressed in a police uniform. He was lanky and looked slightly sickly, as though he had not slept sufficiently in many weeks. His hair was a mousy brown, dangling in his young eyes as he fiddled with a thread on the sleeve of his jacket. Booth made his way over; when the man saw him approaching he stood up straighter, and extended a hand out to shake.  
'Agent Booth? I'm Oliver Darin, current curator of the Dame Murdoch Gallery.'  
'Current curator? What makes you say that?' Booth asked as he shook the man's hand, taking in seemingly genuine expression and stance.  
'I've only been in charge here for a couple of weeks. I was called by the Board that runs this place, and asked to fill a sudden vacancy. They didn't tell me much else but,' he gestured down his chest, 'someone as young as me rarely gets offered this kind of job. I wasn't going to turn it down.'

'Had you had any association with the gallery in the past?'  
'Nope. I'd been working around the country, on this exhibition. I've been following it around, trying to get some experience at the different galleries it's been to. I s'pose the people up top must have heard about me or something. I'd been volunteering here for a few weeks when they asked me to take over until the Hardman collection had moved on.'  
'That's the artist, right?'  
'Yeah. He did all the pieces in the room where they found the body, including the statue where you found, um…' The man trailed off awkwardly, his eyes darting towards the gallery containing the crime scene for a moment.  
'Right. Well, thank you Mr Darin. If you can think of anything else,' Booth slid a business card from his pocket and handed it across, 'please don't hesitate to call me.'

Pulling out his phone to call in to have the remains collected, Booth let his eyes gaze through the open entrance to the gallery and watch Brennan work through the scene with precision. While their cases were hardly ever normal, this one seemed particularly odd to him. A gut feeling of sorts, something was sending subtle warning bells through his mind, but he was yet to know why. With a sigh he raised the phone to his ear, resignedly ready to begin what promised to be a trying case.

**I will warn you now, this is going to be a slowly-updated story. I'm currently studying in my final year of school, and I don't know about other schooling systems but the one in my state of Australia is rather strenuous and eats a lot of your time, with in-class assessments and of course exams all contributing to our final scores. So this is going to be a bit of a release for me, something to do to escape the monotony of studying in the little free time I'll have. So I recommend that you either put it on alert, or review so it comes up as updated in your review history, or however you keep track of stories, since its not going to be coming up in the Bones feed very frequently. I hope you enjoyed it, and please send me off a review! Thankyou :)**


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